


and if you want, we'll share this life

by DETSANTlAGO



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Also this was very fun to write, Amy is so happy, Established Relationship, F/M, I AM SO HAPPY, Jake is so happy, Marriage, Peraltiago, Post 07x07, There are so many emotions hoooooo, This one is for you Alex, amy santiago - Freeform, jake peralta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:53:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23147272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DETSANTlAGO/pseuds/DETSANTlAGO
Summary: Amy doesn't want to get her hopes up, but when her fertility doctor has sneaking suspicions that her hormone treatment symptoms might not be normal, she gets her hopes up. Spoiler alert: it was worth it.
Relationships: Jake Peralta & Amy Santiago, Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 3
Kudos: 107





	and if you want, we'll share this life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jesseabrams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesseabrams/gifts).



> Oh BOY I haven't posted anything in over a year, wow hi - sorry for the drought! I usually don't like posting my fics because I don't even BEGIN to hold a candle to all my amazing and talented writing friends, and honestly I'm only posting this because Alex told me to, so, hi! This was so fun to write and I love jumping into Amy's thought space for a while, especially when it's something so happy!! SO here this is, be kind + leave nice comments, maybe I'll try and be a bit more prolific in my writing and posting.

“Have a nice night, Amy.”  
Click.  
The silence that filled the apartment after Amy’s fertility doctor hung up the phone was almost claustrophobia-inducing. Amy didn’t want to get her hopes up, but her doctor sounded so confident that her symptoms could mean something more than just additional hormones in her body. The anxieties that came before any time she was hopeful in the past returned in full force, and she tried to tamp them down so she wouldn’t be disappointed if the inevitable test in her future came back negative, but she couldn’t - not when a doctor was hopeful. If a medical professional was confident, why couldn’t she be? 

She paced the abandoned “war room” and deliberated for a while whether or not to take the test without Jake home. On one hand, they’d been through too much thus far for him to not be involved in this too - he held her and wiped her frustrated tears after every negative test they stared at together, and she wanted him there to experience the euphoria of a positive test too (or so he was there to console her after a negative test). But on the other hand, she didn’t want Jake to experience another negative test in real time, because she knew it would just eviscerate him as much as it does her. He was a rock, solid and unshakable in the face of her struggles, but she knew how he held things in and played it off like he was fine, and she knew this wore so heavily on him. She didn’t want to have to watch him save face for her again. Jake would always be there to comfort her when she told him about the negative test, and the unbridled, caught-off-guard joy she would get to witness if she could tell him she got a positive one made her smile just thinking about it. Jake would be home soon anyways, so she wouldn’t have to deal with either extreme of emotion by herself for too long. She was taking the test, if not for her sake, then for his. 

Her hands shook a little as she poured herself a glass of water in the kitchen, and she drank it as quickly as Jake once chugged a can of orange soda in under a minute at work for a bet worth five dollars (he won). She then rummaged through the bathroom cupboard until she hit the back, finding one, two, and then three pregnancy tests she had stuffed behind towels after concluding they were done trying for a while. She decided, since her doctor was so enthusiastic, she would take all three. With all of her research she knew that false positives were real, and with the surplus of hormones coursing through her body, she didn’t want to risk it. 

She took each test and set a timer for three minutes, sitting down on the closed lid of the toilet with shaking hands and bouncing knees. Her thoughts were so all over the place she could barely even finish one before another came to take its place. 

What if it-  
The doctor was so sure-  
It might not be-  
Don’t get your hopes up.

Amy was standing up before the timer even had a chance to ring, she had been fixating on the descending numbers so intensely. She turned it off and set her phone down, taking a deep breath and looking at herself in the mirror with some sort of mix of determination and suredness she was trying to muster up. “Whatever the tests say, I’ll be okay,” she said quietly to herself, just like all the other ones before - her therapist firmly believed in self-affirmation and Amy had fallen into the practice, even before their fertility troubles. She took another deep breath, flipped over the first test, and held it up. 

Pregnant.

Amy set the test down and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands before picking up the test and reading it again, her heartbeat picking up quickly. 

Pregnant.

She laughed, once, breathless. And then she sighed. It could be a false positive, she thought, although the happiness bubbling inside her chest wasn’t listening to her brain.   
She flipped over the second, and then the third right after since she just couldn’t wait to do one at a time. 

Pregnant.  
Pregnant.

Amy laughed again, a little louder, covering her mouth with both hands as she stared at the three plastic sticks sitting on her countertop. “Oh my god,” she whispered, leaning on the counter with both hands and looking at herself in the mirror. Her smile was so wide, and her eyes were shining with unshed tears as her head and heart fought to process this information. She was pregnant, she was pregnant, she was pregnant - three times over, each test said so. Her body wasn’t broken. Finally, after endless vitamins and scheduled sex sessions and fruitless data collecting, she was going to bear a child. A child that Jake and Amy were able to conceive (somewhat) naturally after months of believing they never would get that chance. This felt like a miracle, and perhaps it was. Whatever it was, she would take it, gladly.

She threw away two tests but kept one, pocketing it and keeping it there. She didn’t want Jake to stumble upon it when he got home and dug through drawers to find comfy clothes for the night, or find it in the living room, or even in the bathroom. She wanted to be the one to tell him, she wanted to see his face go from confused to overwhelmingly joyful, she wanted him to hug her so tightly she might break, she wanted to wipe his tears and experience that happiness since they had gone through such darkness together. 

She heard Jake unlock the door and her heart started racing all over again, but she stayed put - she’d let him settle in from work and get comfortable before laying such momentous news on him. She heard the fridge open and close, and she heard him go into the bedroom and rustle through the closet to find clothes that didn’t include a tie and jeans and buttons. She knew she had been a bit of a monster since starting hormonal fertility treatments, and Jake graciously gave her a little more space (if not for her safety, then for his own), so he wasn’t suspicious of coming home and settling in on his own. Once she heard the sound of Mario Party and Jake’s frustrated grunts, because Wario cheats apparently, she decided to emerge from the bathroom. 

“Oh, there you are,” Jake said once she walked in, glancing up at her and smiling before turning his focus back to his game. “Was wondering where you were, figured you were finishing up a shower.”   
“Yeah, sorry, I just…” Amy trailed off, biting the inside of her cheek and smiling a little as she took a couple steps closer to Jake. “So, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but ever since I started those hormone treatments-”

“I haven’t noticed anything!” Jake interjected, his voice a little higher - he was lying, but she didn’t care to address that the way she wanted to.

There was a beat of silence, and Amy’s eyes narrowed just a little. “You said that way too quick.” 

“I mean, you did cry at that one car commercial, and it wasn’t even an emotional one, it was about towing capacity,” Jake shrugged, his attention sufficiently diverted from his Switch for now.   
“Yeah. Well, I called the doctor to see if that was a common side effect, and apparently, it isn’t,” Amy nodded, frowning a little and squeezing her palms together. They were sweaty, and she just now realized how nerve-wracking and permanent this was. She knew Jake would take the news positively, he’s wanted this just as badly as she did, but a small part of her was worried that because they weren’t actively trying, he would be more averse to this. 

“Oh no, is everything okay?” Jake asked with a frown, standing up and letting his Switch sit forgotten on the corner chair. His eyes were full of concern, and it hit Amy again - he was all in, every single step. The anxiety was replaced with overflowing, bubbling excitement.

“Yeah! She did have one guess as to what might be causing it, and um,” she paused, pulling the test from her hoodie pocket and holding it in front of Jake, fingers tight around the ends to dispel some of the trembling in her hands with a broad smile on her face. “She was right.” 

Amy’s smile fell a fraction as she carefully watched Jake’s face while he tried to process exactly what was going on. There was confusion, a cautious twitch of a smile on his lips as his brow furrowed at the test, his eyes scanning it over and over as he slowly put the pieces together. Her breathing was coming quicker and a little more shallow, the lump of tears sitting in her throat as she waited for him to say or do anything - it was agonizing. 

Jake laughed, a little breathless as his eyes went from the test to Amy’s face. “Ames…” he said softly, as though if he said anything too loud, this whole thing might be torn away from him. “Are we having a baby?” he asked, his voice faltering. She could see it, the cautious optimism in his eyes as he waited for confirmation, though it was quickly turning into a wide smile of total realization.  
“We’re having a baby,” Amy confirmed with a breathless voice, nodding happily and laughing as Jake lunged towards her. 

Her arms wound around Jake’s neck and she squeezed him close, burying her face in his hoodie as she felt his weight tip her backwards. She could feel that he was trying and halfway failing to hold back the tears by the way he was breathing, and she laughed, pulling away to look up at him with a bitten lip. “We’re gonna have a baby,” she repeated softly, moving to cup his face in her hands and swipe her thumbs across his cheeks to catch the tear that fell. 

“Oh my god, Amy,” Jake said softly, his hands running down her sides and squeezing her hips gently, still holding her close. “I...oh my god.” 

Amy giggled and shook her head a little at Jake’s incoherence, pulling him down for a slow kiss with a hand on the back of his neck. “I love you so much,” she murmured upon pulling away, foreheads pressed together as she looked up at him. 

“I love you so much, wow,” Jake laughed, kissing her once briefly before letting her go to rub his eyes. “I don’t even...what do we do now?” he chuckled, wrapping his arms around her and rubbing her back, just looking at her with wonder and dumbstruck happiness. 

“Well, it wouldn’t be an awful idea to get into bed for the night, it’s almost nine and I’m exhausted from dealing with Holt all day,” Amy chuckled, holding onto Jake’s biceps and squeezing lightly. She felt herself get lifted up and she laughed as she was moved to the bed, carefully laid down before Jake joined her on his side of the quilted mattress. 

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to sleep right now,” Jake laughed, pulling the comforter over their legs and laying on his pillow, arms outstretched for Amy. Usually they slept curled up upon themselves, backs to each other or with a good foot of space between them, but right now Jake just wanted to be near Amy and their child, the thought of which still made his head spin. 

“I know, but we have work tomorrow,” Amy murmured, leaning her head into his chest and smiling as her arm wound around his waist. Her fingertips slipped under his sweatshirt and she pressed a light kiss to his jaw, looking up at him. “We should at least just lay down for a while, yeah?” she asked, smiling and brushing a curl from his forehead. 

Jake nodded and sighed, kissing Amy’s hair lightly before pulling her a little closer, his hand warm on her side under her shirt. “Yeah, that’s all I wanna do,” he murmured, his thumb skimming the front of her stomach lightly. 

They both fell quiet, letting the silence become comfortable as their muscles decompressed from both the stressful day and the news that had injected fresh adrenaline into their veins.   
Somewhere in the moment Amy turned so Jake could spoon her, and she felt his arms tighten around her, one warm hand resting on her stomach. She chuckled and turned her head to look back at him, a hand gently brushing his jawline to briefly kiss him. “You’re gonna be a good dad,” she murmured, gently squeezing his chin and grinning brightly. The smile she was rewarded with could single-handedly power all of New York’s lights at night, and it made her eyes all misty again. 

“Only because you’re gonna be the best mom ever,” Jake murmured, nudging his nose into Amy’s hair and kissing the side of her neck lightly. His hand brushed a gentle circle on her stomach and gently tugged her closer, and Amy could feel his smile with the lips near her neck. 

“Stop,” Amy mumbled with a small smirk, giggling quietly and closing her eyes as she nestled into Jake’s hold. She was feeling so many things at once: overwhelming joy, relief, clarity, but she also couldn’t shake the niggling feeling of anxiety underlying all of it like a shaky foundation. 

“Ames, you know I will not stop telling you that,” Jake chuckled lightly, his hand moving to caress her hip lightly. “You are going to be the best mom, because if you can take care of me you can take care of any small person,” he joked, but he wasn’t entirely joking - Amy put up with, and sometimes even indulged in, a lot of his childish whims instead of making him grow up like everyone else had tried to do. She let him be himself, even if that meant playing Switch games rated E for Everyone and keeping a rack of unreasonably priced, unwearable sneakers in their bedroom. He only “grew up” because it felt natural, it felt like he was just blending his life impossibly more with Amy’s. He grew up enough to want a child with her so badly, and now they were getting it - what a feeling that was for him. 

Amy decided to just kiss him in response, gentle but insistent before pulling the covers up to her chin. “Thank you,” she murmured, holding the forearm barred across her chest and squeezing gently. “Don’t stay up too late, babe.” 

“I’ll try not to,” Jake murmured, sighing as his hand gravitated back to her stomach, protective even though there was no swell there (yet). He couldn’t contain his happiness, even in the moments before rest took him, because just under his palm was a clump of cells that was going to be his entire world in a few months’ time. 

Amy laid awake for a while after she felt Jake’s breathing even out against her neck, her fingertips gently sweeping lines up and down his forearm as she thought. She couldn’t believe she was here - in bed with her detective partner turned husband and love of her life, intimately sharing the knowledge that their world was about to change for the better with a baby that they had longed for for the better part of a year. If you would have told her she would be laying in bed like this with Jake, of all people, when she had first transferred to the Nine-Nine, she would have put in a transfer again. But now, here, with Jake’s palm burning warm on her stomach, his arms so securely around her, even in his subconscious telling her everything was going to be okay because he had her, she couldn’t imagine a world where this wasn’t her reality. 

She couldn’t wait to make a binder for this.


End file.
